


Would You Turn Your Back On Me?

by Neuqe



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: 2x13 Welcome to Earth 2, 2x14 Escape from Earth 2, Canon Divergence, Cisco and Barry have a proper discussion after what happened on Earth 2, Cisco is having a small crisis about his powers and feelings, M/M, Sort of fix-it fic, Sort of reaction fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-08
Updated: 2016-03-08
Packaged: 2018-05-25 12:27:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6195095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Neuqe/pseuds/Neuqe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cisco tries to deal with the aftermath of their visit to Earth 2</p><p>or the one where Reverb knows Cisco way too well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Would You Turn Your Back On Me?

**Author's Note:**

> Alright, the dialogue of the flashback is mostly from episode 2x13 Welcome to Earth 2 from the scene where Iris, Deadshot and Cisco meet Reverb. I trust you guys can pinpoint the moment when I started to write the dialogue and abandoned the canon.

_“What the hell is going on here? Are you two related to each other?” Cisco heard Earth 2 Iris’s urgent inquiry somewhere behind him but it sounded like coming through underwater. He could not focus on her right now because he was staring at his own Earth 2 doppelganger. It was fascinating and awesome but damn creepy as well. He had thought that meeting his doppelganger would be like looking at the mirror because Dr Wells and Harry were so similar but the experience for him was different. He could instantly spot the differences between them but they shared a fair share of characteristics as well._

  
_“I knew, there was another me in here!” Cisco blurted out. He could not help himself. His doppelganger might be evil and working for one of their worst enemies so far but he was still tiniest bit of excited to meet Earth 2 Cisco. Meeting doppelgangers was not something that happened every day and he had waited this since they heard about existence of this Earth._

  
_“And I knew you were coming, Cisco,” the Earth 2 Cisco answered with a smooth voice. “Even before you went to the breach and set a foot in this world,” he continued as it would not have been creepy at all to admit stalking people with their powers. But at least Cisco got the confirmation that they shared the same powers._

  
_“See, we are all…connected,” he prompted and studied Cisco with his gaze._

  
_“And your name is Vibe?”_

  
_“Reverb,” he corrected with a wicked grin and a small bow._

  
_“That is not actually the worst thing you could have come up with,” Cisco was slightly impressed with the name and apparently awesome naming skills were part of him no matter what Earth was in consideration. “But not the best,” he continued quickly. He would not give the satisfactory for the other Cisco to think that he was somehow better than him. Also Cisco had grown quite fond of the name that Barry had given him._

  
_“I have been watching you, Vibe. And I have to say I am extremely disappointed,“ Reverb continued talking with the same conceited smooth voice. Cisco was seriously getting annoyed with the doppelganger and his holier than thou attitude._

  
_“Yeah, I know the feeling. I am not sure what is worse. The fact that you are part of Zoom’s gang or that weird samurai situation you got going on the top of your head there,” he shot back, staring at the other man with slightly disgusted look._

  
_Reverb ignored his sarcastic comments and flashed a smug grin. He gestured towards his left ear. “Listen to this. What if Zoom wasn’t running the show anymore?”_

  
_“What do you mean?” Cisco was caught off-guard._

  
_“You don’t even know how powerful you are. All you use your powers are for these cheap party tricks when you could be a god. We could be gods. But no, you attempt to avoid your gift and treat it as a curse. Only use it when **he** requires for it.” Reverb must have caught Cisco’s mildly panicked look in the eyes as he let out a mischievous laugh. “That is right, Vibe. I know everything about you. And about… Barry, right? And all about your very precious Team Flash.”_

_He let out an exaggerated sigh and continued. “It is kind of pathetic. The whole hero thing you try so desperately to keep up. You, we, are meant for greater things than being a side kick for some speedster, who you could easily destroy with your powers.”_

_Cisco’s mind was racing. Reverb knew way too much about them and if he worked for Zoom, then Zoom also knew everything about them. This was turning into a greater catastrophe than they never thought. He had never considered that his powers would be anyhow superior to Barry’s or that the powers he possessed could be used to something else than tracking people but apparently Reverb had figured it all out. The mere thought of being a threat to Barry unsettled him more than it should had._

  
_“I would never hurt him.”_

  
_Reverb chuckled softly. “Of course you wouldn’t. You are in love with him,” he said with a mocking pout._

  
_“That is the most pathetic part of it all. Mostly because he will never see you in the same way. You will always be the hilarious, nerdy best friend. Nothing else.”_

  
_Now Cisco’s heart was racing almost as fast as his mind. It felt like someone had sonic punched him in the stomach. It was always painful to get reminder that his feelings were unrequited but now was not the moment to deal with his personal feelings. This was supposed to be a rescue mission for Harry’s daughter._

  
_The doppelganger took few steps closer to him. “Which is ironic because with our powers we should be running the show on both earths. Not some ridiculous speedsters.”_   
_Cisco was about to protest but Killer Frost was faster._

  
_“Are you out of your mind? Let’s turn them over to Zoom.”_

  
_Reverb finally focused his attention to something else than Cisco and he was grateful for the break. His thoughts and emotions were all over the place. He needed to pull himself together._

  
_“Speak like that to me again and I will shatter your whole nervous system without breaking a sweat.“_

  
_Cisco thought that nothing could scare Killer Frost but seeing her backing off almost in panicky manner back to her lover’s side made him seriously wonder if Reverb, and him, could actually execute the threat with their powers._   
_Then he turned his attention back to Cisco and put his e_

_lectric blue glasses on. “So, Vibe. You wanna run Central City? What do you say?”_

_“I say: Flash save us!”_

  
_For a moment Cisco had forgotten that Barry was listening to the whole conversation. When the thought struck him there was no time for think about the consequences of the things Reverb had said because he knew only two things: he was not about to get killed by his very own doppelganger and that they all needed Flash to get out of this situation._   
************************************************************

Cisco shuddered as the memory came into his mind. Powers or not, their time on Earth 2 was not exactly the fondest memory of his. Still, that particular conversation would not leave his thoughts, no matter how hard he tried to get rid of it. He tried to focus on his current task, tinkering with his Vibe glasses, but it was lost cause.

  
It had been only few days since they arrived back to their own Earth and closed the last breach. Things were slowly becoming normal. The heaviest thing of it all was the loss of Jay, especially Caitlin was suffering with the sorrow and grief. Cisco couldn’t blame her and he hated to see her grieving again. He wished to help somehow but she preferred solitude. Barry, being Barry, of course blamed himself about everything. Not being able to save Earth 2, leaving the man in a mask behind and the deaths of Joseph and Jay. It would take time before he would forgive himself, Cisco knew that, even though all of them had offered their comforts about the topic. Jesse and Harry were the happiest of their little group, finally reunited and adapting to the life of Earth 1. That seemed bring little happiness to Barry because at least they had succeed in one thing.

  
Cisco and Barry still had not talked properly after the incident with Reverb, which only partly was Cisco’s fault as he had been kind of avoiding him. Barry getting kidnapped by Zoom, rescuing him and death of Jay had kept them busy and distracted enough though. The situation was awful and Cisco felt guilty for being grateful that Barry was too focused on other things to confront him. The conversation was inevitable and Cisco dreaded for it. He was not ready for it and he was still wrapping his head around the things Reverb had said. The love part was not exactly breaking news for Cisco. He had learned to live with his feelings. Although it was slightly disturbing that Barry had found out about his feelings from his evil doppelganger. Also there was not exactly a textbook example how to deal when an evil doppelganger reveals that you are in love with your best friend. Surely the rule what happens on another earth stays on another earth applied to these situations?

  
He was quite sure that The Conversation, as Cisco was now referring it to, would include gentle and sweet rejection from Barry. He knew it was coming but he would have liked to live in the almost comfortable I-have-crush-on-you-and-you-don’t-know-about-it stage for little longer. The thing that really bothered him was Reverb’s talk about his powers. It had been agonizing enough after building the cold gun to accept that he had built a gun, which could hurt, and had hurt, Barry. Knowing that his powers’ existence was a threat to the speedster was multiple times worse to accept. It had been highly disturbing to watch Reverb abusing Barry back on Earth 2 and he did not want to repeat or make that scenario possible ever again.

  
“Hey, what are you doing?”

  
Cisco was startled by the sudden voice and let out a small yelp. When he looked up from his desk he could see Barry slightly leaning on the table and smiling at him.

  
“Dude, you gotta stop sneaking around. I will get a cardiac arrest one day.”

  
“You must have been deep in thought. I thought you heard me coming,” Barry said, now with more concerned face on him.

  
“Well, I didn’t,” Cisco snapped, “there is also this revolutionary invention of knocking before entering a room.”

  
“Sorry,” Barry muttered. The big smile was gone and he pushed his hands into pockets of his jeans and looked at the floor.

  
Cisco wanted to kick himself for snapping at Barry because none of the things he was feeling right now were the speedster’s fault. He was having rough time already.

  
He vaguely waved his hand. “It is alright,” he showed the glasses to Barry, “I’m just tinkering with these. Trying to make them automatically tuned for whatever vibration they are facing.”

  
Cisco had felt so useless on Earth 2 when his powers had not worked and he never wanted to feel that way again. He had failed with the one thing he was supposed to do. It was not likely that they would be travelling to another Earths in any foreseeable future but he needed something to do distract himself with and this was as good option as any.

  
Barry did not point out the pointlessness of his tinkering but just nodded.

  
“Can I stay here for a while?”

  
They were in one of the working rooms close to the cortex. Before the particle accelerator explosion these rooms had been packed with scientists, now they were a mixture of storage and working spaces for Cisco and Harry. “I promise I won’t distract you,” Barry quickly added.

  
Cisco shot him a suspicious glance but Barry did not react to it anyhow. This was not his favourite place in STAR labs and usually he did not hang out here unless he wanted to investigate something on his own. Cisco did not know why Barry suddenly wanted to be there but he was not going to deny his wish from him.

  
“Yeah, of course,” he said with a smile.

  
Barry returned the smile and took one of the chairs next to Cisco. Cisco tried his best to focus again on the glasses but failed miserably. First of all it was incredibly hard to focus on work when someone was staring at you all the time and the fact that someone was Barry did not help at all. His thoughts were anyway occupied by Barry as his behaviour was odd. Cisco felt a sting of guilt in his chest as he realised that he had been so focused on what the visit to Earth 2 had done to him that he really had not considered what it did to Barry. Screw unrequited crushes, other earths, doppelgangers and powers, his best friend needed him.

  
Cisco turned his chair so that he was facing Barry. “Spill it out, man,” he prompted with a vague hand gesture.

  
“What?”

  
Cisco huffed. “I can feel your eyes drilling into my skull. Something is clearly bothering you and bottling things inside does no good. Best friend sharing time right now.”

  
Barry flashed a quick smile but he got serious again and ruffled his brown hair. “I miss you.”

  
“Miss me?” Cisco echoed, “we see each other’s every day,” he pointed out quickly.

  
“Yeah, but that’s not the point. I miss my best friend,” the speedster said, “things have been different since we returned from Earth 2. You’ve been kind of distant and avoiding me.” The last part sounded more like a question than statement as if he was asking a confirmation that this was the case and not just his imagination.

  
Barry took another deep breath. “I understand if you are mad at me after everything that happened back on Earth 2. Me not being able to save-“

  
Cisco had grabbed his hands. He felt that best friend sharing time required some hand holding at this point. “I’m not mad at you. You haven’t done anything wrong. I couldn’t ever be angry at you about something like that. Alright? I cannot say that our visit to Earth 2 was the easiest thing for me either. It is a whole another world and meeting our doppelgangers set the weirdness level to whole another stratospheres. In retrospect I gotta admit that not all of our decisions were the smartest ones, but we cannot dwell on that too much. One day we’ll figure out how to save the other earth, too and stop Zoom permanently.”

  
Cisco was not sure if he believed his own words completely but Barry’s trademark megawatt smile had appeared on his face and Cisco felt almost hopeful that everything would be fine after all. That moment did not last too long because apparently Barry was determined to find out what caused Cisco’s odd behaviour.

  
“I have been wondering,” Barry started clearly tiny bit nervous, “was it true what Reverb said to you?”

  
Cisco swallowed hard. Apparently The Conversation was upon them.

  
“About my powers?” he asked, but continued without confirmation because he needed the share time as well.

  
“I don’t know, Barr. We never got real confirmation whether Reverbs powers are the same as mine. But if they are, then logically thinking it’d would make sense that my powers could reverse yours,” Cisco muttered the last part and as soon as he saw the mild shock on Barry’s face he pulled his hands quickly back as if he could hurt him by a touch. He even pushed his chair back a bit.

  
“I’m-I’m not planning to develop or train my powers anyhow though. I’m perfectly happy with just the vibes. Well, I’d be much happier without them, too, but I’m not too keen on adding shooting waves of vibrations out of my palms into my skill set list, so you don’t have to worry. Not that I’d hurt you in any way. Ever.” Cisco was well aware that his speech resembled more of a word vomit than actual well-constructed sentences. But once he started he was unable to stop and he had a desperate need to tell all of this to Barry and convince him that he wouldn’t use his powers for anything bad. He would not become Reverb or anything even remotely close to him.

  
Barry now slid his chair closer to Cisco’s and firmly took his hands into his. Hand holding seemed to be a vital part of this conversation. Cisco looked at their interlocked hands. It was comforting to know that Barry was not completely freaked out. Even though a small voice back in his head kept telling to pull his hands back again, he let Barry to hold his hands firmly.

  
“Is this what has been bothering you?”

  
Cisco nodded reluctantly and finally looked up only to be surprised to find Barry smiling gently at him.

  
“Alright. First of all, I know you and I trust you with my life. I know that you would never intentionally hurt me,” Barry's voice was gentle.

  
Cisco wanted to say that Barry had trusted Dr Wells as well and that he had built the cold gun to stop Barry if he ever went to the dark side but he bit his tongue and let Barry continue.

  
“Secondly, all of the metas we’ve encountered so far have had powers that could easily be used for destruction and many of them have done exactly that and believe me, I’d be more than worried if anyone else would have speedster stopping powers, but it’s you and I don’t worry at all. I trust you. Also, this whole hero thing isn’t a one metahuman show. None of you ever doubted too much that I’d go rogue with my powers, instead you helped me to get stronger and control the speed. You were there the whole time for me. You only deserve the same support. So if you want to learn how to shoot vibrations out of your hands, I’m more than happy to help you in every way I can.”

  
Cisco was on the verge of crying. All the possible outcomes he had imagined for this conversation did not include Barry smiling brightly at him and offering his unconditional support to help him. He was lost of words but Barry was not yet finished.

  
“It’s totally your decision and I’m cool with whatever you decide to do and you don’t have to decide it now.”

  
“Thank you,” Cisco said it with the outmost sincerity. He was not convinced that trying to develop his powers was the best opinion and that his powers would not hurt Barry in any way, but it meant a lot to him to get the chance to decide it himself without any sort of pressure but only to receive acceptance and support no matter what the decision would be.

  
Barry smiled as he stood up and opened his arms. “C’mere.”

  
Cisco stood up and soon he was in Barry’s tight embrace. He felt a strong wave of relief wash over him. He just wanted to stay in this moment for a while. He felt safe and happy, just being there and knowing that Barry would not turn his back on him. Barry gave really nice hugs.

  
Unfortunately the hug was soon over and they were back sitting on their respective chairs.

  
“I’m glad that we talked about that,” Barry started, “but I didn’t mean your powers when I asked whether the things Reverb said were true.”

  
“You meant the love part,” Cisco said and was surprised how easy it felt to talk about it to Barry. It might have something to do with the fact that Barry was not ready to abandon him because of his speed force threatening powers that made him convinced that unrequited feelings would not scare him off either.

  
“You’re determined to clear the air properly, aren’t you?” He said with a laugh and Barry answered with almost a shy smile.

  
“It’s true.”

  
There was a silence after Cisco’s words. He felt like he needed to say something more but couldn’t find the right words. His emotions were all over the place and it was difficult to put them into words. He almost felt the need to apologize. It took a moment before he was ready to bring himself to look at Barry’s face and reaction. But when he did, he saw Barry smiling one of his most genuine smiles. It was like his whole face was lit up. Cisco was too surprised to react in any other way than staring at Barry.

  
“That’s awesome. I mean the feeling is mutual. I like you. _A lot_. In a not platonic way. Do you wanna have dinner with me? As a date I mean,” Barry kept babbling and blushing into a deeper shade of red.

  
It took a moment before Cisco registered what Barry was saying and wrap his head around the fact that Barry was returning his feelings and that Reverb had been wrong with accusing Cisco of having an unrequited crush. His face broke into a giant smile as well. “It seems that word vomit is contagious disease.”

  
Barry laughed softly.

  
“But yes, I’d love to go on a date with you.”

  
Cisco could swear that Barry’s smile got even bigger if it was even possible.

  
It turned out that the Conversation was not that bad after all.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> For my defence: I never intended this to become so long and I'm relatively new to whole DC fandom so I apologize if my knowledge of Cisco's powers is not perfect.   
> I have been working with this since 2x13 aired so there might be some canon divergence with how they deal with things. The title is from Monster by Imagine Dragons because I have always associated this song with Cisco and how he might think about discovering his powers. Especially now after meeting Reverb.   
> All the mistakes are mine. Especially the potential ones that are in the dialogue from 2x13.  
> My tumblr is http://arrows-felicity.tumblr.com/


End file.
